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What would you do for a second chance with your first love?

Kenzie Church found true love young and lost it all. Since then, he’s lived a quiet life of deprivation and self-denial. In this poignant romance, he’s offered a second chance with his first love. Will he circle back? And if he does, will Maezie be there waiting?
•••
Hello, my friend. I got a message that you need me.

Maezie’s carefully crafted response to the voice message I’d left had been a classic understatement, for I’ve never stopped needing this woman. And she’d texted me back. Hot damn! Game on.

I don’t linger over the specifics of this spur-of-the-moment intercourse. I get where I’m coming from—fresh from being dumped by my wife of eighteen years who, if I’m being honest, was way too young and finally decided to trade me in for a more age-appropriate model. But I wonder what’s what in Maezie’s world.

My mind unlocks a long-forgotten memory to connect the dots. I’m maybe six years old and messing with a box of kitchen matches in the woods behind my house. My best friend, Mark, and the O’Haro brothers are with me, and we think it’s a good idea to set ablaze the pile of dried leaves we’d grown weary of jumping into. The cute, little glow quickly explodes into a raging fire, and we run away frightened, leaving Mother Nature to solve the problem.

Have I lit another careless fire?

Will I run from the consequences once more?

Instagram review by @LaurensLiteraryLifestyle: “Written in well-thought-out and lyrical prose, this is a story about knowing in your bones who your soulmate is and the obstacles you have to overcome to find your way back to them. ‘I was a boy charged with making the decisions of a man. I failed that man, and I failed you.’ And this is a hopeful story. One filled with missed chances and bad timing but hope that love can triumph over the mistakes of the past.”



Author’s Note:

Circle Back is a very personal story for me, inspired by my first foray into serious romance during my college years where one of the tenets of my fraternity was the saying “A pearl of great price is not obtained merely for the asking.” I have never forgotten that saying or the woman who is my Maizie and who remains that pearl of great price.

In the recent aftermath of being served divorce papers, I was sifting through the remains of my self-worth, and that examination led me back to my college love. She’d encouraged me to keep a journal, which eventually became the framework for Circle Back.
Last year, I was just beginning to settle into the dream of writing historical fiction when my amazing editor, Lisa Cerasoli, seized upon the sample of Circle Back I’d attached in an email as an afterthought. Lisa’s encouragement led to the completion of this vital novel and contributed significantly to my own recovery.

Social media is full of conflict, and much of the content we view on television and in the theater thrives on it, so with Circle Back, I set out to chain together all the beautiful stories of my youthful romance to offer some balance to all the gloom and doom out there. Love can be beautiful, and it can be sustainable. I hope you find this story uplifting and maybe one or more of you will be inspired to circle back for that pearl from your past. Anything’s possible…if you believe.

You’ll see.